Sherlock Holmes

Holgar Rasmussen – Starred in the 1911 film The Black Hand
(aka  Murder in Baker Street) made by the Nordisk Films
Kompagni. In the UK it was probably called The Conspirators.
Basil Rathbone – Born in South Africa but raised in England,
this quintessentially British actor with clipped diction and an
angular jaw had spent most of his career playing villains before
being cast as Sherlock Holmes (allegedly over a Hollywood
dinner party) by 20
th
Century Fox supremo Darryl F Zanuck.
His first film, yet another adaptation of The Hound of the
Baskervilles, was made in 1939 and was the first to use the orig-
inal Victorian setting. In it Rathbone was joined by the
bumbling but immensely likeable Nigel Bruce as Watson.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (UK: Sherlock Holmes) came
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out later that year, again true to period, and conjuring up a
convincing evocation of gaslit, foggy London. Inexplicably, Fox
then dropped the pair and they moved to Universal where they
starred in a dozen updated and generally less well-made
features. 1942: Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (working
title: Sherlock Holmes Saves London), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret
Weapon, Sherlock Holmes in Washington. 1943: Sherlock Holmes Faces
Death. 1944: Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman, The Scarlet
Claw, The Pearl of Death. 1945: The House of Fear, The Woman  in
Green, Pursuit to Algiers. 1946: Terror By Night, Dressed To  Kill
(UK: Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Code). Some claimed they
were based on Doyle’s original stories, but in most cases the
resemblance was only passing. For a while Rathbone had to
contend with the silliest haircut in cinema history, and although
there were some triumphs (notably The Scarlet Claw and Dressed
to Kill), the fast production schedule and low budgets meant
that most were not as good as they could have been. But
Rathbone and Bruce proved to be the most popular Holmes
and Watson yet and, for decades, they were the archetypal
Baker Street sleuths.
Alongside the films, Rathbone and Bruce appeared in 213
half-hour American radio broadcasts, covering all the original
stories plus ones only alluded to in the canon (such as the giant
rat of Sumatra), together with plenty of brand new cases. The
series ran from October 1939 to May 1946. In 1953, Rathbone
returned to the role that had made him famous. The Black
Baronet was shown in May (as part of the CBS TV series
Suspense, adapted from a story by Adrian Conan Doyle and John
Dickson Carr) while in October he appeared on stage in
Sherlock Holmes, written by his wife Ouida. It ran for three
weeks in Boston, but flopped in New York where it was taken
off after only three days.
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